The Unnatural Nature of Science Read online

  Another aspect of the unscientific nature of psychoanalysis is the presence of different ‘schools’ – the Freudians, the Kleinians, the Jungians and so on. One can ask how their differences could, in principle, be resolved. What evidence, what experiment, what new data would persuade one group to change their ideas? There does not seem any way of resolving the differences. In part, the problem may be that each group forms a closed system.

  It is also not possible, at the present time, to do any experiment at a lower level of organization – that is, at the level of brain function or neurophysiology – which would contradict psychoanalytic theory. Current explanations of dreaming couched in neurophysiological terms or computer analogies provide no explanation of the content of specific dreams. How, then, could one show that there is or is not an id or an Oedipus complex? At present it is not possible to relate the ideas of psychoanalysis to any other body of knowledge: they are entirely self-contained.

  The current situation in psychoanalysis is in some way similar to the study of embryonic development in the eighteenth century. The claims of the rival theories of preformation and epigenesis could not have been resolved at that time because the state of biological knowledge and of technology were both inadequate. It would be hard to deny that the eighteenth-century embryologists were scientists: they designed experiments and made observations to the best of their ability – their science was simply premature and primitive. Both of the rival groups had enormous difficulty in accounting for the emergence in the embryo of highly organized patterns and forms, and invoked the idea of a ‘building master’ or ‘vital force’ or just assumed that everything was preformed. These were essentially ad hoc inventions, effectively having the same complexity as the phenomena they were meant to explain. In this sense they resemble the ego, id and super-ego and the emotions assigned to the unconscious.

  Those engaged in psychoanalysis are dealing with a much more difficult problem than embryonic development. Not only is the subject-matter so much more complex, it is not easily accessible to experimental investigation in the way that embryos are. It is not known what equivalent to the ‘cell’ is required for understanding human behaviour, or even whether such an equivalent exists. Psychoanalysis is much worse off than eighteenth-century embryology.

  One should be suspicious of ideas, like those of psychoanalysis, which have been so easily incorporated into our everyday thinking. If the rest of the physical world follows laws quite different from common sense, it would be surprising if the workings of that most complex of organs, the brain, could be so readily understood. For example, recent studies show just how unnatural the workings of the brain are with respect to language. Vowels are handled in a different way to consonants, and verbs and nouns are stored in different regions, as is shown by brain damage in specific regions. Even inanimate and animate nouns are categorized.

  It can be argued that human behaviour and thought will never yield to the sort of explanations that are so successful in the physical and biological sciences. To try to reduce consciousness to physics or molecular biology, for example, is, it is claimed, simply impossible. This claim is without foundation, for we just do not know what we do not know and hence what the future will bring. No matter whether analogies between computers and the brain are correct, ideas about the problems of thinking and brain function have been greatly influenced by them. A characteristic feature of science is that one often cannot make progress in one field until there has been sufficient progress in a related area. The recent advances in understanding cancer were absolutely dependent on progress in molecular biology.

  Ageing is a current area in which it might be premature to try to do research. Although there has been extensive discussion about the nature of ageing – such as whether it is genetically determined and whether it reflects the accumulation of random errors in the genes and proteins of the cell – there has been remarkably little progress. Until there was progress in understanding how genes work and control the behaviour of cells, it was not even possible to begin to think about the problem in concrete terms, and even now it is very difficult to know what research programme would be appropriate. For this reason, relatively few scientists work on the problem of ageing.

  Should claims for paranormal phenomena be treated in the same way? That is, should the paranormal be regarded as a premature field that will eventually prove fertile? Those who believe in paranormal phenomena like telepathy, levitation, psychokinesis (the ability to move objects by the action of the mind) and astrology claim that these involve phenomena for which contemporary science has no explanation. Moreover, they complain that conventional science totally ignores the field even though it seems to contradict mainstream ideas and could reveal quite new dimensions about human potential and behaviour.

  While there are numerous reports of paranormal phenomena, they are almost without exception anecdotal. Good evidence in the presence of independent observers, preferably including a professional conjuror who could detect fraud, is simply not available for any of the phenomena. As an explanation for this, it is suggested that somehow doing a proper experiment on paranormal phenomena makes the subjects self-aware and so eliminates the phenomena. It is thus very difficult to assess the reality of such phenomena. Nevertheless there are many reports, and the question arises as to how, for example, science can deal with levitation – that is, the claim that people can rise spontaneously off the ground in the absence of any known force – or with communication between minds in the absence of any known means of transmission of information. At present such phenomena are inexplicable by science. Moreover, they seem to be so at variance with everything we know about physics that, in the absence of very persuasive evidence, it is very difficult to take them seriously. Levitation and telepathy may exist; the Queen may be a Russian spy; but both would require remarkable evidence to persuade us to give up our beliefs to the contrary. One cannot but have sympathy with Michael Faraday, who, when asked once too often to witness some new paranormal phenomenon, replied, ‘I will leave the spirits to find out for themselves how they can move my attention. I am tired of them.’

  Many so-called paranormal phenomena fit nicely with Langmuir’s concept of pathological science. Irving Langmuir was a distinguished chemist who, about forty years ago, coined the term ‘pathological science’ in an informal but now famous lecture. He focused on a number of phenomena which had startled the world of science during his career but which had subsequently faded from view. The Langmuir criteria for pathological phenomena are that the maximum effect observed is very small, near the limit of detectability; the magnitude of the effect seems independent of the cause; claims of great accuracy; usually a fantastic theory; and criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses. The mind-reading experiments associated with extra-sensory perception were popular some time ago and fit these criteria quite well. In these experiments, subjects were asked to guess the character on a card which was held by an experimenter behind a screen. The results claimed to show a result that was statistically better than chance and so implied telepathic communication. Again and again the results were subjected to statistical analysis. Some subjects were better than others. There were accusations of fraud, and in some cases (but by no means all) fraud was established. After a flurry of enthusiasm, the entire series of experiments has virtually disappeared without trace, but will no doubt surface again in another form.

  Much of the evidence for the paranormal deals with apparently trivial phenomena, such as guessing the nature of hidden cards and coincidences. In some ways the presenting of such evidence implies that anyone can do science and no special training is involved. Whereas conventional scientific knowledge is obtained in a painstaking way, with breakthroughs and flashes of insight being rare events, it is characteristic of the paranormal that major ‘discoveries’ are easily obtained without any special knowledge. It offers a way of getting knowledge ‘on the cheap’. I have only to compare how hard it is to establish in my field, embryology, even a very simpl
e piece of knowledge – such as when the cells in the developing arm make the decision to become a humerus – and the ease with which evidence for near-miraculous events like levitation and psychokinesis appears to be established. Whereas my tiny bit of information takes many work-years, experience of levitation – even though it invokes unmeasured forces and challenges the basis of physics – can be established, and apparently accepted, in seconds.

  It is this lack of requirement for scientific knowledge, together with the concept of vitalism, that links some of the paranormal and some aspects of fringe medicine. Vitalism is an idea which assigns to human life, particularly consciousness, a special quality which must forever remain outside conventional science. Vitalism is usually associated with an anti-reductionist stance, the view being that life cannot be reduced to mere physics and chemistry and that a more holistic approach is required. While there is a genuine problem about how to relate different levels of organization – such as the atomic, chemical, cellular and organismic – to each other, and about which level is the most appropriate on which to tackle a particular set of problems, that is not what the anti-reductionists and vitalists have in mind. Any philosophy that is at its core holistic must tend to be anti-science, because it precludes studying parts of a system separately – of isolating some parts and examining their behaviour without reference to everything else. If every process were dependent on its part in the whole then science could not have succeeded. We can study cells outside of the body and particular chemical reactions outside of cells – the success of biochemistry is due to just such isolation of parts – but that is not to deny the importance of also studying the systems as a whole. The holists’ unwillingness to consider explaining life in terms of, for example, molecular biology and their desire to invoke some special life-force effectively restore the soul and make an afterlife possible. The paranormal also provides humans with magical forces to control their environment and their health directly. Such beliefs are very seductive and need not necessarily be connected with vitalism, though they often are.

  It is remarkable that so many people have been taken in by Uri Geller’s claim to have special powers as shown by his ability to bend spoons. (No one seems concerned that they are always bent at the weakest point – to bend the bowl of the spoon would be a more impressive trick.) Even some sociologists of science thought this might represent revolutionary science in the Kuhnian sense – as revolutionary as Einstein’s or Darwin’s contributions, say. Those who investigated it did not know whether paranormal metal bending was ‘real’ or not – nor, as sociologists, did they care: they made it clear that it would make not one jot of difference to their analysis. Unfortunately, they missed the really interesting aspect, which is why so many people are taken in by these absurd claims. It really does matter from any point of view whether the bending is real or fraudulent. While it is understandable that sociologists wish to take a neutral stance in a scientific controversy, it is necessary for them to recognize that Geller’s claims are quite outside science. If not, one might just as well investigate, as science, the production of rabbits out of hats and the sawing in half of ladies.

  By taking a conventional scientific viewpoint, however, is there not perhaps the danger of missing out on important discoveries made by ‘amateurs’? The scientific equivalent of the great artist starving, neglected, in his garret would be that of the brilliant untrained scientist working outside conventional science, perhaps in a basement, and being scorned by the Establishment. Yet the history of science provides no good example of this, in this century at least. Einstein comes close to this image, as initially he worked unknown in a Swiss patents office. But when he submitted his papers to a physics journal the editor was so impressed that he dispatched a colleague to Zurich to find out more about their remarkable author. It is also true that the geologist Wegener was treated very badly with respect to his ideas about continental drift. Even so, I am sympathetic to vigorous rejection of the absurd: completely open minds may turn out to be completely empty. That Mars is made of red cheese is a testable falsifiable hypothesis in Popper’s terms. Should claims such as this be taken seriously? No, they should be rejected as absurd and are nothing to do with science.

  The physicist Richard Feynman, when told a story about flying saucers, told a believer that the existence of flying saucers was not impossible, just very unlikely. His questioner claimed that Feynman was being unscientific; if he could not prove flying saucers to be impossible, how could he say they were unlikely? Feynman’s reply was that it is scientific only to say what is more likely and what is less likely, and that his guess was the more reliable. Feynman’s view of science was that it proceeded by informed guesses whose implications were compared with experiment.

  Astrology is another case where the scientist’s guess that it is absurd is almost certain to be right. In astrology, the moment of birth is taken as the decisive time in the subject’s life: calculations are made to find out how the planets appeared in the heavens at that moment. The subject’s birth chart then reveals a pattern of ‘cosmic actions’, interpreting which involves assessing the various combinatorial interactions between the sun, the moon and nine planets, which offers an enormous number of possibilities from which to choose.

  Astrology had for many centuries almost the status of a universal law. It was widely held that the heavens influenced earthly, inferior events, and such a view was subscribed to from Aristotle right through to Bacon and Kepler. By contrast, St Augustine thought that astrology enslaved human free will and he vigorously condemned it. He used the argument that twins, with virtually identical birth times, could have quite different characters. To this the astrologers replied that the twins’ instants of birth were in fact different. Augustine’s rejoinder was that if they wished to take into account such small time-intervals then the accuracy of their predictions was, to put it mildly, highly suspect, for he could not believe in such a high degree of accuracy. Debates like this, as so often with pseudo-science, failed to make much progress.

  For example, the sixteenth-century astrologer Hieronymus Wolf predicted the date of his own death and gave away all his worldly goods when this approached. When the predicted date of his death passed without incident, he was too ashamed to reclaim his possessions and excused his error on the grounds that he had not given the position of the planet Mars sufficient consideration – showing how astrological predictions can always be saved from falsification. And, even if certain claims of astrology were falsifiable, that would not make it a science.

  Claims have been made that distinction in certain areas is linked to star signs. Scientists, for example, have a high frequency of births when Saturn has risen and a low frequency when Jupiter is superior in the skies. However, correlation alone is a long way from cause and effect, and it is not at all clear what precise claims astrology actually makes. The very implausibility of a cause whereby the planets could influence our lives has been recognized since Newton and has led to a decline in astrology among serious thinkers. Unless a link can be made with the rest of science, astrology remains a pseudo-science, linked to the paranormal. And, because it is believed in by so many people worldwide, it provides another nice example of the attractiveness of magical thinking.

  Scientific modes of thought are psychologically uncomfortable, whereas magic may be seen as a means of defending the self against the hostile world which is not easily given up. I cannot help but be struck by the similarity between certain paranormal beliefs and the beliefs of children that give them a magical view of the world, as described by Piaget (Chapter 1). In many cases, it will be recalled, the child is under the impression that reality can be modified by a thought and has the animistic belief that the will of one object can act on that of others. There is, in children, a magical causality according to which all things revolve about the self.

  The capacity for self-delusion, even among scientists, should never be underestimated: conviction can have profound effects on observation. Marcel
lo Malpighi, in the seventeenth century, believed the chick embryo was preformed in the egg, even though his own beautiful observations provided the best available evidence that he was wrong. Another example is the N-ray affair, which has never been satisfactorily explained.

  X-rays were discovered in 1895, and other radiations from radioactive materials were identified shortly afterwards. René Blondlot, a distinguished French physicist, announced in 1903 that he had discovered yet another form of radiation, which he called the N-ray in honour of his university at Nancy. Others, too, began investigating this new phenomenon, which had remarkable properties; for example, almost all the materials that the rays passed through were opaque to ordinary light. Blondlot was even challenged by some physicists who claimed that they had been the first to discover N-rays. The number of papers published in the leading French journal on N-rays reached a peak in 1904, but then R. W. Wood, an American physicist, visited Blondlot’s laboratory and published a report in Nature. Wood was persuaded that N-rays did not exist. Not only did all his tests with Blondlot’s apparatus fail, but he reported that the results were unaffected when he somewhat mischievously removed a key element of the apparatus. Blondlot initially went to great lengths to respond to Wood’s criticism, but even his French supporters became increasingly sceptical and he refused to get involved in a definitive test proposed by a French journal.